SSD Hiccup?

[d4m1r]

Hey guys, something very weird happened yesterday....I have a 128GB Crucial M4 first off and was booted into Windows 7 when all of a sudden my MBP just shutoff with no warning or errors Like not restart, but just cold shutdown.

Thought that was weird but ok.....Tried to boot it back up, and it wouldn't after 2-3 restarts. I would only get a blinking file folder icon, which I guess indicates no file system found? All the while, I could hear my SSD trying to boot up but not being able to. After 5-10 minutes, while I was panicking searching for a solution on my iPhone, my MBP just randomly booted back up

Now, everything seems normal, SSD sounds and boots up normally, no SMART or other errors, etc....Nothing. Has this happened to anyone else before? Should I be worried and what could have caused this? Just in case I made a backup of my files but I don't know if I should now pre-emptively replace the SSD before/if it is gonna crash again....

 

[neilmacd]

You can 'hear' your SSD??

 

[Weaselboy]

Now, everything seems normal, SSD sounds and boots up normally, no SMART or other errors, etc....Nothing. Has this happened to anyone else before? Should I be worried and what could have caused this? Just in case I made a backup of my files but I don't know if I should now pre-emptively replace the SSD before/if it is gonna crash again....

Yes you should be worried. It sounds like your SSD is failing and should be replaced.

 

[alex0002]

Check the firmware version of your M4, as the very early ones had a bug where after a certain number of total power on hours - approx 5000 hours - the ssd resets and you get a reboot/crash every hour. The firmware revision 0009 and older had this problem, but it was corrected in 0309, 000F and later revisions.

If this happens again, even if you have a newer firmware, just let it sit there with power on. e.g. boot with the option key pressed, but don't select a drive. The M4 does garbage collection at idle (powered on but no reads/writes). Sometimes that will help.

 

[d4m1r]

Well, I have good news

I didn't think updated to the latest firmware would completely fix the issue (thought it was hardware related) but it did! Since updating, this hasn't repeated itself onces and as soon as I turn on my MBP, my SSD boots up instantly everytime and finds all my OS's.

I thought for sure it was dead because that is exactly how my previous OCZ Vertex 2 died....Restarted the thing 4-5 times in a short time span and it just didn't spin up the 6-7th time...Restarts are hard on SSDs appearently for some reason....

 

[simonsi]

Did you work out what you were hearing as the SSD booting? They should be silent....

 

[d4m1r]

Did you work out what you were hearing as the SSD booting? They should be silent....

SSDs are mostly silent, but it is normal to still hear them a tiny bit. They should make an electrical sound which they are booting up for example. I heard nothing (it was completely silent) when it didn't want to boot.

Now it boots up normally everytime and it sounds normal too

 

[T5BRICK]

SSDs are mostly silent, but it is normal to still hear them a tiny bit. They should make an electrical sound which they are booting up for example. I heard nothing (it was completely silent) when it didn't want to boot.

I guess it is possible that I'm just not hearing it, btu I've never heard my 256GB Crucial M4 or my 256GB Samsung 830 make a peep.

 

[leman]

SSDs are mostly silent, but it is normal to still hear them a tiny bit. They should make an electrical sound which they are booting up for example.

I can confirm this — the Vertex2 in my old MBP was also sometimes producing a quiet electric whine.

 

[simonsi]

I've never heard my Crucial M500 but I suspect a) there are other noises coming from the MBP and b) it may be outside my frequency range....